Man Snapping Photos of Birds Is Shocked to See the Shape They Take

By: Mackenzie Wright | May 10, 2018

One lucky photographer was in the right place at the right time and snapped an amazing photo. Like so many other professional and amateur photographers who flock to Costa Brava, Spain to take pictures of the starling murmurations, he had hoped to get some good photos, but even he never expected this. When he was home reviewing his shots, he realized what he caught.

When it comes to photography, some shots look like they just happened by chance, and that the photographer lucked into them. Well, luck might have had something to do with it, but often there is a lot more to it than that.

Photographers are more likely to get 'lucky' if they have the skill needed to take a great shot, combined with the dedication and determination it takes to be there for that perfect moment. Daniel Biber spent days scouting locations to capture flocks of birds over the Spanish countryside, and all his hard work paid off with that 'lucky' shot.

The 46-year-old photographer caught a flock of starlings taking off over Costa Brava, the flock like a cloud taking unusual and beautiful shapes. He was astonished to capture the moment when they morphed into what looks like the shape of a giant bird.

The photo of the 'giant bird' flock was only one in a series of shots snapped by Biber. He didn't even realize what he had at the time. "I was taking pictures of the murmurations over several days," he said to the Daily Mail. "Only when I checked the pictures on the computer later, I realized what formation the starlings had created."

"I was so concentrated on taking pictures at the time that I hadn't realized that the starlings had created a giant bird in the sky," he continued. "It took less than 10 seconds for the birds to create that formation. I realized that I had captured a unique snapshot, technically, sharp and in high quality."

Biber, a former aerospace engineer who lives in Germany and runs a bicycle business, was caught by the shutterbug decades ago. He's been taking pictures since 1981. He went digital in 2008. He's been visiting Spain for years to snap the wonderous and mysterious show put on by the starlings annually. For a long time, he was looking for a great shot of the birds.

"I always have at least one camera on me whenever I leave the house," he says. "And I go on regular holidays to northeastern Spain where I have witnessed fantastic murmurations of starlings over the years. I've tried to photograph the starlings but it never worked out as well as I hoped for."

This time, Biber was persistent and determined to get the shot. His patience paid off. "I picked a spot where I thought they would turn up and picked a matching foreground and backdrop in order to put them in scene," he explains. "It usually happens that birds of prey turn up and the starlings then create bizarre forms. It can be quite erratic and completely random."

The image won an international photography competition run by Vogelwarte Sempbach, a bird observatory in Switzerland. Since that winning shot, experts have requested from Biber permission to use his image as a comparison between real and doctored shots. His images may also be featured in a museum exhibit next year.Source: DailymailPhoto: Dailymail